sent tale we have Count Arnold de Montarbas, a type of the pleasure-loving French noble, haughtily regarding his peasant entourage as existing only for his convenience and at his pleasure. We have the 'fierce demagogue, Coupe-Tete, fierce in words, not deeds; and his sister, the ardent Amazon citoyenne, Leonie, alias 'the Wolverine.' As a foil to this representative of the ferocious feminine element which played so prominent a part in that terrible crisis, we have the sweet, blooming, loving Rosine, with all the heroic endurance of a devoted woman hid under her girlish confiding softness. It is with no small satisfaction that we see her delivered from the machinations of the reckless Count, and saved for her brave, honest, peasant lover, Pierre. This little idyll, indeed, forms the only bright streak in the otherwise sombre woof of the story. The author is evidently an enthusiastic admirer of the beautiful and unfortunate Marie Antoinette, to whom, whatever may have been her feminine faults, we must grant the virtues of courage and devotion; so we have glimpses of the ill-fated Queen and her good-natured, well-meaning, but irresolute husband, at the crisis of their history, which are probably as faithful as most historical novels succeed in giving. As we have implied, the style is vivid and lively, and the action well-sustained; and though there are no profound studies of character, no psychological analysis, no introduction of the higher problems which did not then apparently much trouble men's thoughts, we close the book with the feeling that it is a pleasantly told story, well conceived and executed, and with a good deal of historical vraisemblance, though in the very faithfulness of its portraiture the scenes through which it leads us are sometimes repulsive enough. The following is a good specimen of the author's happiest and most picturesque style :

'The opening of the States General, the convocation of that deliberative assembly which Louis himself hoped was to prove the salvation of his kingdom, had been fixed for the fourth of May. A severe and tedious winter was over at last. Spring, that burst on France as she must have burst on Paradise, bloomed fresh and radiant, like a girl opening into womanhood, all hopes and smiles. The white cloud floated in a pure blue sky, the breeze stirred and fluttered through a wealth of leaves that had not yet lost their tender green, birds soared in the air or sang in thicket, and fishwomen, gathering in angry groups, shrieked, raved, and swore, tossing their bare brown arms, and calling down curses from the peaceful heavens on all that was pure and noble and bright and beautiful here below,'

We notice one or two typographical blemishes that somewhat interfere with the pleasure of reading this book, which is otherwise very well and neatly got up.

A WOMAN HATER. By Charles Reade. Montreal: Dawson Brothers, 1877.

Mr. Charles Reade has served a sufficiently long apprenticeship to the writer's craft to enable him to avoid many of the faults that often make shipwreck of the hopes of less experienced novelists. A Woman Hater' may therefore be safely pronounced to be lively and exciting, and to have enough plot (that 'salt' which alone prevents putrefaction) to keep the reader in a proper state of anxiety. Add to all this the fact that, like most of Mr. Reade's novels, it has a definite social purpose, in support of which the author deals some 'swashing blows,' and we shall be fain to admit (though we may doubt the aesthetic propriety of fiction being laden. with social moralities) that this is a book above the average.

The particular cause of the oppressed which Mr. Reade, speaking with the voice of one Dr. Rhoda Gale, champions upon this occasion, is that of female medical students; and, by the strength of the arguments he puts in his character's mouth, it can easily be seen that he is no half-hearted advocate of a despised and distrusted, but steadily aggressive, movement. We must recommend any one who still thinks it more immodest for a few women to study anatomy so as to enable them to cure their fellow-women, than it is for every woman in the world to be driven to consult a physician of the other sex, to carefully peruse the portion of this work in which the virago,' Dr. Gale, holds forth at considerable length upon the subject,

He

The Woman Hater' himself, Harring. ton Vizard, hardly deserves the name. is a cynic of a tolerably old type, old at least in novelists' pages, who is always saying hard things about women and doing them the kindest turns imaginable. The very idea of a real unadulterated woman hater being found at Homburg with a lovely sister, a flirting cousin, and a pragmatic aunt (which is, in fact, the very position our hero occupies at the commencement of the tale), is sufficiently absurd to show the impropriety of the name.

In short, all of Mr. Reade's characters appear, in the hurry of the acting, to deviate considerably from the ideal character he intended to give them. Zoe, the lovely sister, is described as a young high-minded woman, not hardened by the world, so averse to deceit that her eloquent blood would

Miss

mantle in her cheeks from 'pinky up to 'crimson' at the slightest, or no provocation. Yet Zoe is always surprising us. This model young Englishwoman falls in love with one Severne, a most contemptible scoundrel, who lies gratuitously, uses foul and excited language before her, is eaten up by avarice, forges clumsily, and apparently forgets all about it, for, without taking any trouble to meet his felonious paper at maturity, he quietly stops on at Vizard's house, to whom he had disposed of his 'flimsies,' until the inevitable discovery is made and he is kicked out. This is stupid enough for a most accomplished rogue and swindler, as he is supposed to be. But the modest Zoe! Seeing Severne at the public gaming table after a quarrel, she 'dropped her aunt's arm, and began to creep up like a young cat after a bird, taking a step and then a long pause, still with her eye fixed on him.' This arch, but cat-like advance' doesn't make her blush at all, but we should think the hardened old aunt might have done so for her. Par parenthese we might remark that nearly all the characters get feline in their movements throughout the book. Gale, M.D., avows herself cat-like' at p. 97; Fanny Dover, the flirting cousin, watches Severne like a cat a mouse.' The transparently simple-minded Zoe and the more worldly Fanny open very cat-like' (peculiar English that) upon Severne in a train, that is to say, in pursuance of a prearranged plan, one of them plays on his feelings while the other watches from behind her book' every lineament of his face.' Even a steady English waiting-man catches the infection and retires cat-like' at p. 92; and Lord Uxmoor, Zoe's alternative lover, experiences great difficulty when the female. Galen (that is a joke, as Mr. Reade would not be above pointing out) pumps him with 'insidious questions, cat-like retreats and cat-like returns.' But to leave this domesticated animal, never more useful than in Mr. Reade's hands, nor more palpably endowed with nine lives, let us return to Zoe. She is, as we learned, intensely modest, but Severne soon kisses her hand, and his rapid style of wooing quickly makes him master of the situation. When he disappears to the background, Zoe speedily consoles herself with 'Milor,' but on the same evening re-plights her troth to the first love, who sneaks back and sees her in her aunt's garden. When it is clearly perceptible, even to her weak brain, that she cannot possibly marry Severne, who turns out to be married already (a fault not so easily condoned as persistent lying, forgery, and violent assaults on unoffending ladies), she is very good and quiet till she books Lord Uxmoor again, and it is not till Severne really dies that we can believe she

·

is fairly free of him. And this is a pure, delicate-minded English lady of birth and breeding? Pshaw, Mr. Reade, you must know better, though you do make Fanny let Severne kiss her hand again and again in a crowded railway carriage, with warm but respectful devotion, which she minded no more than marble.'

On the whole, younger writers need not despair of success when they find a veteran like Charles Reade make such blunders as these. It would, in fact, be hard for a tyro to find a much more vulgar style than his is. It is a case,' 'and that's a fact,' are samples of his classical English. Vizard keeps a printed list of five fellows' who were killed or crippled by careless women, which is an absurdity; and he speaks to a lady of men with stomachs in their bosoms,' which is rather nastier than it is witty. He is so sentimental that when a drop or two of blood falls from the wounded temple of the woman he loves, upon his clothes, he folds up the entire suit and ties it up in a silk handkerchief, leading us to suppose that either the suit was very small or the kerchief very big. But this runs in the family, for Zoe carefully irons and puts away an old spoiled dress she had got drenched in during her wooing. All the women are called La.' Old nurse Judge is ‘La Judge,' and the doctress, 'La Gale,' which is decidedly uncalled for. But to wind up this string of gems (for we have no room for the serio-comic rescue from a mad bull, which we really thought fiction writers had done with), we must mention the delicate way Rhoda has of showing her sympathy for a friend, by laying a pair of wet eyes on her shoulder.' After that one would like a glass of wine, but hardly such as ran through Ashmead's veins, like oil charged with electricity and elixir vitæ.'

JOAN: A Tale. By Rhoda Broughton. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

Given a high-bred, noble-looking girl, with ripely, dewily red lips, a milk-white throat, and a willowy form, and an amorous guardsman, five foot eleven in his shooting boots, with wicked grey eyes, who has not got it on his conscience that he ever in all his life missed an opportunity of squeezing a woman's hand,' with Miss Broughton to set the puppets dallying, and we know beyond a peradventure what the upshot will be. The amorous guardsman of the killing eye and the ready hand will fall desperately in love with the girl with the milk-white throat; and the girl with the milk-white throat will fall even more desperately in love with the

amorous guardsman. Having said thus much, and added that the hero's name is Anthony Wolferstan, and the heroine's Joan Dering, we have already disclosed three-fourths of the plot of Miss Broughton's latest novel, and the remaining fourth need not detain us long. As might have been prophesied beforehand, the course of true love does not run smooth. In Miss Broughton's novels it never does. The hero's mother is opposed to the marriage, and succeeds in inducing Joan to break off the engagement by disclosing to her, in a powerfully written scene, the fact that her father had been guilty of forgery. Wolferstan is manly enough not to allow the knowledge of this fact (indeed, he appears to have been acquainted with it all along) prove any hindrance to his suit; but Joan's determination not to injure her lover's position and prospects in tife by allowing him to link his destiny with that of a forger's daughter, is not to be shaken. Wolferstan goes off in despair, becomes entangled in the meshes of an old flame, Lalage Beauchamp (after whom he had once walked round the room on his knees), and marries her out of hand. Eventually Lalage dies of apoplexy, caused apparently by too great devotion to the pleasures of the table, and the reader is left to surmise that the hero and heroine are at last united and live happily ever afterward.

The details of the plot thus sketched are filled in with even more than Miss Broughton's accustomed cleverness; and the work is, we think, the best the author has yet turned out. Joan herself is altogether charming-quite the most high-minded and lovable girl in the gallery of Miss Broughton's heroines. It has been objected, indeed, as a fatal blot on the book, that such a girl deserved a better fate than that of marrying a man so obviously unworthy of her as Wolferstan. If there is a mistake here it is the original one of making her fall in love with him. When Joan sees the great and manifest deterioration in character which Wolferstan suffers from her rejection of his suit, though from an unselfish motive, it is hard to discover what other course was open to her than to correct her error in judgment, and, by marrying him, make the best reparation in her power.

Joan, who has been brought up in all the comfort, refinement, and luxury that wealth can command, at the outset of the story suffers a reverse of fortune through the sudden death of the relative upon whom she has been dependent, and is plunged at once into poverty. She goes to live with an aunt and two cousins-girls-all

warm

hearted, but horribly vulgar. Her journey to her new home, at which she arrives in a butcher's cart, is told with much humour; and her new life, and the constant jar which

the tawdriness and coarseness of her surroundings produce in her, are described with truth and power, if with some exaggeration. Miss Broughton has a strong dramatic instinct, and a really remarkable gift of drawing, with a few rapid strokes of her facile brush, characters so real and lifelike that one seems to know them personally. The aunt, vulgar but warm-hearted; Diana, blunt, outspoken, and honest; Bell, sentimental, snobbish, and amorous; are all capital sketches; and even more amusing, alas! is Joan's rival, Lalage. The four dogs, Regy, Algy, Charlie, and Mr. Brown, too, are drawn (evidently from life) with wonderful humour and skill, and serve to give quite a characteristic flavour to the book. The descriptions of natural scenery are another very pleasant feature, being evidently the outcome of a genuine love of nature, the ocean especially.

The work would not be Miss Broughton's if it were altogether free from grave faults. There is the occasional coarseness and slanginess from which she seems unable to rid herself entirely. A sense of humour is an excellent gift, but Miss Broughton's sometimes runs away with her; there is hardly a situation, no matter how serious or sentimental, to which she cannot see a ridiculous side. The gift is so rare in feminine authors, however, as almost to condone the errors of taste into which it sometimes leads this remarkably clever writer.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

JULIET'S GUARDIAN : A Novel. By Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron. New York: Harper & Bros. 1877. Montreal Lovell, Adam, & Wesson. 1877.

HARPER'S HALF-HOUR SERIES. Epochs of English History. Early England up to the Norman Conquest. By Frederick York-Powell. With Four Maps.-England as a Continental Power. From the Conquest to Magna Charta, 1066-1216. By Louise Creighton. With a Map.-The Turks in Europe. By Edward A. Freeman, D.C.L., LL.D.-Thompson Hall. A Tale. By Anthony Trollope. Illustrated. New York: Harper & Bros. 1877.

RECONCILIATION OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. By Alex. Winchell, LL.D., New York: Harper & Bros. 1877. Toronto: Hart & Rawlinson. CAMP, COURT, AND SIEGE. A Narrative of Personal Adventure and Observation during two Wars, 1861-1865, 1870-1871. By Wickham Hoffman. New York: Harper & Bros. 1877. Toronto: Hart & Rawlinson.

MAR'S WHITE WITCH. A Novel. By G. Douglas. New York: Harper & Bros. 1877. Toronto: Hart & Rawlinson,

HARPER'S HALF-HOUR SERIES. University Life in Ancient Athens. By W. W. Capes.-Epochs of English History. Rise of the People and Growth of Parliament, 1215-1485. By James Rowley, M.A. With Four Maps.-The Tudors and the Reformation, 1485-1603. By M. Creighton, M.A. With Three Maps.-The Struggle against absolute Monarchy, 1603-1688. By Bertha Meriton Cordery. With Three Maps. New York: Harper & Bros. 1877. Toronto: Hart & Rawlinson.

HOURS WITH MEN AND Books. By William
Matthews, LL.D., Author of 'Getting on in the
World.' Toronto: Belford Bros. 1877.
ART-LIFE AND OTHER POEMS. By Benjamin
Hathaway. Boston: H. H. Carter & Co. 1877.

NEW LANDS WITHIN THE ARTIC CIRCLE. Narrative of the Discoveries of the Austrian Ship 'Tegetthoff,' in the years 1872-1874. By Julius Payer, one of the Commanders of the Expedition. With Maps and Numerous Illustrations from Drawings by the Author. Translated from the German with the Author's approbation. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1877. GARTH. A Novel. By Julian Hawthorne. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1877.

HISTORY PRIMERS. Edited by J. R. Green. Geography. By George Grove, F.R. G. S. With Maps and Diagrams. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1877.

To the Editor of the Canadian Monthly: SIR, So it seems that a new era in artcriticism has dawned upon Toronto. Let us rejoice, if it prove a true one. It is just the very thing that we have been looking for, if we could only find it. The 'would-be-critics of Toronto journalism,' we are told, have betrayed 'extreme ignorance.' They have run up to seed in a weak head of 'adjectives.' They have been more prone to praise than to blame. The public must be taught what to 'condemn.' Something more in this way: 'This impertinent fellow, would you believe it, has had the impudence to paint a bad picture; come up here, you sir, and take a stinging rap on the knuckles.' Our new-comer lays a heavy indictment; how do his own credentials stand? Are they quite satisfactory? Well, we are almost afraid, hardly. His method is a little too much in the vein of the celebrated Mr. McGrawler, who held that the whole art of criticism consisted in 'tickling.' There must be some 'slashing' and 'plastering,' to be sure, but they spoke for themselves, and any whipster like Paul Clifford could do them. The only real difficulty was to tickle with skill; that is, to wrap up in a maze of words one of these two propositions: This work would be very good if it were not very bad; or, it would be very bad if it were not very good. Accordingly we find that, while Mr. A.—and Mr. A. alone is plastered-pretty thick, no doubt Mr. B. has some 'capital little studies,' but 'his largest picture is a mistake in color, drawing, and everything;' that Mr. C. has 'un

doubtedly real powers,' but 'halts too often at glum smudginess;' that Mr. D. is 'so good that he worries us by not being better'-one of his pictures is 'warm, true, and artistic,' but another is 'all aglow with the hot breath of the Sahara;' that Mr. F. has a 'very pretty quiet scene, charmingly given, but without idealization or power;' that Mr. G. 'has, perhaps, more power and vigor than any other artist in Canada', but that 'in many of his sketches he has been betrayed into a crude, hasty, and almost nonsensical scrimmage of colors;' that Mr. H. 'can paint well in some respects, but we do not like his style;' that Mr. I. has done 'much excellent work,' but has given 'grotesque prominence,' etc; that Mr. J. has 'much excellent work mixed with some that is disappointing.' Now, all this is really very clever tickling. It is said that in some countries they inflict a torture which consists in tickling the victim to death. And it is not so bad an imitation to say that a man has 'undoubtedly great powers,' but they carry him no further than 'glum smudginess;' or that power and vigor, greater perhaps than in any other artist, end in a 'nonsensical scrimmage.' It is all very ingenious, but perhaps just a shade monotonous. Give us a little more plastering, or let the critic carry out his canon of condemnation, and slash a little, by way of relief. But then, you see, it is safe. There is no proving or disproving these things, and they imply knowledge, at any rate. It is not every crític that has the advantage of acquaintance with the art and mystery of painting-how it